Homeowners ask us about indoor air quality more than you’d expect, often after noticing a stuffy room or a musty smell. Some fixes for unhealthy indoor air are simple and others take more effort. Here are five ways to make your home’s air healthier and safer.
1. Use Your Exhaust Fans and Range Hood
This is the easiest one to start today. Cooking releases grease, moisture, and combustion byproducts, and showers add humidity that can encourage mold. Range hoods and bathroom fans exist to move that moisture out before it settles.
Run your range hood every time you cook, and leave the bathroom fan on during a shower and for fifteen to twenty minutes after. A fan that sounds weak or leaves a room damp afterward may not be moving enough air.
2. Seal Your Building Envelope
Your building envelope separates conditioned indoor air from everything outside. Gaps let in pollen, dust, humidity, and whatever else is in the outdoor air. Sealing those leaks puts you back in control of what gets in.
Air sealing also makes almost everything else on this list work better, since a leaky home makes it harder for your heat pump, a dehumidifier, or filtration to keep up. This is where Nisqually Comfort’s whole-home, building science approach pays off.
Common air leakage areas include:
- Gaps around plumbing and electrical penetrations
- Attic hatches and rim joists
- Recessed lighting and duct connections
3. Make Sure Your Heating and Cooling System Is Working for You, Not Against You
A heat pump moves air through your entire home, all day, every day. If it isn’t sized correctly or well maintained, it can circulate dust and allergens as easily as it filters them out.
Changing your air filter regularly keeps your system from pushing dirty air back into your living spaces. An accurately sized system also manages temperature and humidity better. Short-cycling or struggling to keep up is usually a sizing issue, which is why our team sizes every heat pump installation to a home’s actual load instead of guessing.
4. Control Moisture With a Dehumidifier
Excess humidity lets mold, mildew, and dust mites thrive. A room that feels muggy, smells musty, or has moisture beading on the windows likely has humidity levels that are too high.
A dedicated dehumidifier can bring humidity down to a healthier range, but it works best once the building envelope has been addressed with upgraded insulation and air sealing. Otherwise it runs nonstop trying to keep pace with outdoor air leaking in. Sealing first gets you further than dehumidifying alone.
5. Bring in Fresh Air the Right Way
A well-sealed home is better for air quality in most ways, but it also limits how much fresh air naturally moves through. Mechanical ventilation solves that, bringing in a controlled amount of outdoor air while still managing temperature and humidity.
Energy and heat recovery ventilators are the most common way to do this, exhausting stale air while pulling fresh air in and recovering most of the energy so your heat pump works less hard. Whether one makes sense depends on your home’s size and construction.
How Nisqually Comfort Can Help Improve Your Indoor Air Quality
You don’t need to tackle everything on this list at once. What matters more is understanding which issues actually apply to your home, and in what order to address them.
Nisqually Comfort’s part in that picture is your heat pump. We’re heat pump experts, it’s the only HVAC equipment we install, and we exclusively use Mitsubishi Electric systems for their reliability and quality build.
A correctly sized heat pump runs on Washington’s clean, abundant, and affordable hydroelectric power, which can mean real savings on your monthly bill, especially if you’re switching off baseboard heat. For a lot of Snoqualmie Valley homes, it also means air conditioning for the first time, on top of healthier, more consistent air year round.
We back every install with quality equipment, quality craftsmanship, and an extended 10 year labor warranty that matches Mitsubishi’s own parts warranty.
If you’re concerned about your home’s air quality and want a clear picture of your options, we’re ready to help!
